


Sweet, Salt, and Bitter

by Ari (wisdomeagle)



Category: Christian Bible (Old Testament), תנ"ך | Tanakh
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/F, Hate Sex, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Rough Sex, Sister/Sister Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-24
Updated: 2007-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:33:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1636658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/Ari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The unspeakable sins of sisters (one old, one hungry, both ugly in their way).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet, Salt, and Bitter

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Lottelita

Leah, the elder, is starting to droop. Rachel watches her while both do chores, heads lowered, but Rachel peeks out from long lashes to see that her sister's brows and lashes are as scrawny as ever, that she's starting to lose her hair. A bald sister, ridiculous. Under her head covering no one can see it, but Rachel will know, and burn with shame if any trader tries to pay them court -- that she, the youngest, still a child, can bring men to flame but her sister, Leah, the teacher, her guide, no longer can.

Leah's voice is starting to be screechy and rough as the whetstone as she grows more desperate. She no longer coddles Rachel but shouts commands -- fetch me water! work faster, little witch! -- that make Rachel cringe with her own shame and with embarrassment for her sister, who is growing rough and manly in her old age.

"Maybe if you can't win a man, you'll win a woman," she whispers. 

Leah's head snaps up and her watery eyes meet Rachel's dark ones. "Tell me again, sister, louder."

"Maybe you're too much of an ugly bitch to win the heart of any man, so you might as well pay court to a woman so I can get married!"

"You are ridiculous." Leah's voice _is_ low, almost as low as their father's, but Rachel likes it better than the screech that sounds like a man pretending to be a woman, like the travelers who playact rough conquests by the firelight when they have had too much wine. No, Leah's deep voice is better, dark, almost wine-rich, slow, dripping like honey. "You are the silliest girl I have ever met, Rachel. A woman. Pay court. To a woman?" She shakes her head and what's left of her hair falls in front of her eyes, hiding the mockery. Once, Leah teased Rachel for every silly fancy, told her she would run away and become a storyteller if she wasn't careful, or become wedded to a wine merchant because she was always intoxicated. There is no teasing now, only bitterness, in Leah's laughter. 

"I can think of worse things," Rachel says. "I can think of an unmarried girl, fresh and plump, thighs aching for a man's touch, and no one to comfort her but her own sister!"

"You're right. That is silly." Leah snatches up her spinning too quickly, betraying the real anger behind her casually cruel words.

"You should show me," Rachel says in a minute, when she's grown bored again. "You should show me since you're so fucking ugly that I'll never get married!"

"How would I know?" Leah asks. "If I'm so ugly that no man would marry me even if he only saw me in the dark, how would I know what a man is supposed to do to a woman?"

This had not even occurred to Rachel. She was sure, through her long childhood, that her sister had been born knowing everything. How else could she predict when the flowers would bloom, where the best stones could be found? How else could she know the prayers for every occasion, for healing in illness, for the lambing season and for making mutton stew? That there might be subjects of which Leah is entirely ignorant is a new thought, and welcome. There is a sticky, cruel feeling in her heart, that she might know what Leah doesn't, that her fingers, so awkward at spinning and skittish at shearing, might have firm, sure experience in an area where Leah is the fool, the innocent, the youngest daughter for once.

"Then perhaps I can think of a better jest," Rachel says. "Perhaps _I_ will teach _you_."

"Father won't allow it," Leah responds automatically. Because Father will protect her, will sell the bitch for her full birthright's value, and that will never happen if her husband doesn't draw blood the first time. So Leah thinks she is safe. Leah, who has the best meat in service of the vain hope that she will grow fat one day, Leah, who bathes her face in milk but whose complexion is still blotted. Rachel never meant it to be more than a jest, hoping to draw a true smile and bright color to Leah's cheeks, but now she thinks in earnest. 

It would be easy. She has grown plumper on grains and exercise than Leah has on meat and coddling -- fatter and stronger too, and she knows the tricks of her own body and feels, real as fear, that Leah's body will bend the same, will submit to the same caresses and betray the same tremors. She's driven by the ache of the ever-empty marriage bed, plumped year upon year with lamb's wool that rots in mildewed disuse, and the ache and emptiness won't surrender even though no Gods permit a woman the liberty she claims.

She straddles her sister's legs, first, and draws Leah's puckered mouth into a kiss, as the men do in the bawdy stories that she's spied. _Their_ kissing is always met with jeers and catcalls, but her sister only looks startled, her mouth automatically open to admit Rachel's tongue. Rachel's legs are comfortable, wrapped around Leah's waist, and the demands of her kiss become harsher when she realizes that her sister's sharp tongue is at her mercy, that she can bite off Leah's thorny words with sharp, white teeth. Her nibbling makes her sister whimper, which makes her nip harder, waiting for the tears. She's been waiting years and years, since her first blood and the prayers that accompanied it, that her curse might be borne easily and her patience rewarded with a husband and the babies who would still the bleeding. Waiting, waiting, to stop being the youngest and become the mother, herself, teacher, guide. And now she is. Now she's guiding Leah's hands into the warmth of her cloak, now she's teaching Leah that her breasts, though mayhap doomed never to carry milk, are sweet and heavy in Rachel's hands. Leah bleats and Rachel scratches, hungry to taste the honey she's been denied, and Leah simply _sighs_ , as if resigned.

Rachel wants Leah to fight, to quiver and struggle. She wants to wrap Leah's wrists in her fingers and hold them, so that Leah won't try to reach for her own pleasure but will be forced to beg Rachel, but Leah shows no signs of reaching under her robe. She squirms a little (aroused, probably, from being bitten and scratched, no wonder no man wants her), but her hands are still, even when Rachel pinches her thin fingers, even when Rachel slaps Leah's backside. Leah's just crying, and this is all wrong. 

"This isn't the way," Leah tells her. "There's no begetting between women. The Gods won't bless us, and we'll pant and hunger and thirst and eventually dry up and die." But she doesn't say stop. "This is the wrong way." So she does know, after all.

"Show me, then," says Rachel, and Leah's eyes drop at once, demure submission once more her guise, and she puts one hand on Rachel's breast.

"Tears will make your milk sweet when you bear a child," she says, and kisses the breast softly. Rachel melts back from the soft touch, wanting to be bitten. Leah strokes the nipple with her teeth but doesn't bite, but the scratch is enough to soothe Rachel, to send her brain spinning downward, her hips thrusting upward. Leah, who was straddled and weak, has grown strong and robust in the turning. Leah is wisest when she is the teacher, her sister's guide. Leah is wisest when her hands are free to touch Rachel's thighs, to knead them into loosely flowing rivers of desire that twist and bend until they gush forth in a stream of wetness, soaking Leah's hand.

"And tears will make this sweet, too," she says, and bends her mouth awkwardly to cup Rachel's growing wetness. "You're so wet, and smooth, that children will drop freely from your womb," she says, before she begins to feast, and Rachel is reduced to groaning and quivering, pulling her fingers through Leah's hair at random, hoping to catch a snarl and make her sister cry, so that her sister too will have an easy childbirth. She is generous, expansive; she would fulfill any arbitrary demand of the universe, would wait seven years or seventy times seven, if Leah will keep sucking at her, drinking her juices like she's the ripest fruit, teaching her the ways that women know, guiding her from darkness to bright.

 


End file.
